“When Josh Newton had to play, we started to win games, you can never discount that,” Burks says. “As a coach, you always want to look at the people you win with. Look at a guy like Marco Wilson. He played in wins. Guys who change the outcome of a game.”<\/p>\n
Wilson has played in 60 NFL games. Other than Davis, he’s their only cornerback who hasn’t played all their snaps for Burks.<\/p>\n
He held the Titans’ Calvin Ridley to a catch for 14 yards. Then Wilson held the Browns’ Jeudy to two catches for 20 yards when Jeudy came into the matchup with more receiving yards than Ja’Marr Chase in the previous month. He gave up a 13-yard catch to CeeDee Lamb against the Cowboys, but he also defensed passes to the veteran Brandin Cooks and speedster KaVontae Turpin.<\/p>\n
Ivey was promoted to shadowing tight ends in the winning streak. He became more and more of a factor on third down, when he denied the Steelers’ dangerous wide receiver George Pickens on a long ball in the win-or-else finale.<\/p>\n
“DJ has a wide range of skills you love at that position,” says Burks, who has been raving about Ivey since they made sure they wouldn’t have to sign him in free agency with the late pick. “He’s handling multiple spots, and he’s a guy who has got to be able to do that. I know he can do that. He was guarding George Pickens in critical situations. He’s a tight ends guy and he’s a big receivers guy.”<\/p>\n
Golden knows he’s got hungry guys who can cover and want to feast on man coverage. But he won’t go to the well one time too many.<\/p>\n
“You can’t just play man every down. We’re a man- based team. We like to play man. We’ll have enough change up for them so it’s not the stress every down,” Golden says. “A mixture. Just give them a smoke break once in a while. Don’t make it too difficult for them. That is as highest skilled as any position in football. Ther are a lot of drills the other nine of us can do, but the corners really have a different world.”<\/p>\n
Golden can sense the hunger from Newton after he held up on more than 500 snaps last year in the crucible of the stretch.<\/p>\n
“Corner nickel, flex. Hungry, that’s the word that epitomizes his performance right now,” Golden says. “He’s relentless. He’s a great learner. He’s competitive as anybody we have on the defensive side. Asking questions all the time.”<\/p>\n
While Ivey feels encouraged in an offseason he finally didn’t have to deal with the draft and then rehab, Newton is banking last year’s reps. Newton and Turner have combined for more than 1,800 snaps before their 25th birthday.<\/p>\n
“Nothing is a secret in this league. Players over plays. Always. Especially when critical situations are at hand,” Newton says. “Teams are going to go to their best guy they’ve been going to. Whether it’s a rookie or how-many-year vet that’s been making plays for them. Just believing in that preparation. After that, you’ve got to believe in yourself.”<\/p>\n
Newton certainly believes in Golden.<\/p>\n
“He’s big on showing a false picture and making the quarterback believe it’s something other than what we’re playing,” Newton says. “I like his energy and his intensity and what he brings to the table every day. He brings positivity.”<\/p>\n
Burks can read a room and he likes the preface to this one.<\/p>\n
But he also knows it’s early.<\/p>\n
“They haven’t started keeping score yet,” he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“When Josh Newton had to play, we started to win games, you can never discount that,” Burks says.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2053],"tags":[2345,228,443,20083,227,256,2296,7,1843,11990,81,898,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-104650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cincinnati-bengals","8":"tag-al-golden","9":"tag-bengals","10":"tag-centerpiece","11":"tag-charles-burks","12":"tag-cincinnati","13":"tag-cincinnati-bengals","14":"tag-cincinnatibengals","15":"tag-football","16":"tag-hobson","17":"tag-josh-newton","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latest-stories","20":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114627941914826356","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}